Leads were investigated but there was no evidence Saudi Arabia funded the attacks.

Amid renewed calls to declassify and release 28 pages of material about possible Saudi government involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks, we believe that it is important for the public to understand what they are and what they aren’t.

First, the 28 pages were not drafted by the 9/11 Commission that we chaired. Those pages were part of a prior report by a congressional panel investigating intelligence failures related to Sept. 11, 2001. Our commission was created, in part, to finish the work of that panel. But the 28 pages of that 2002 report were never ours to declassify or release.

What’s lost

The 28 pages have generated a lot of speculation and have been described as a “smoking gun’’ implicating the Saudi government in the deadliest terrorist attack carried out on U.S. soil. What often gets lost in those theories is that the 28 pages were based almost entirely on raw, unvetted material that came to the FBI. That material was written up as possible leads for further investigation, and the 28 pages were a summary of some of those reports and leads as of the end of 2002 – all of them uninvestigated.

The 28 pages are comparable to preliminary law enforcement notes, which are generally covered by grand jury secrecy rules.

This point is crucial because the attacks were the worst mass murder ever carried out in the U.S. Those responsible deserve the maximum punishment possible. Therefore, accusations of complicity in that mass murder from responsible authorities are a grave matter. Such charges should be levied with care.

Because the congressional panel did not complete its investigation, 9/11 Commission members and staff were given access to the 28 pages. All the leads contained in them were investigated by our team, which included the original drafter of the 28 pages.

The results are in the 9/11 Commission Report we released in July 2004, specifically chapters 5 and 7, as well as their endnotes. All those conclusions are public; none is classified.

Only one employee of the Saudi government mentioned in the 28 pages, Fahad al-Thumairy, was implicated in our plot investigation. He was employed by the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs and was an imam at a mosque in Los Angeles. The congressional panel did not interview him or any other Saudi. Our staff did interview him in Saudi Arabia. So did the FBI. Ultimately, we acknowledged in our report that we had “found no evidence’’ that he assisted the two future hijackers who passed through Los Angeles.

Highly critical

We also looked at the question of whether Saudi Arabia provided financial support for the attacks. Based on all the evidence available to the commission when it issued its final report, we found “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded’’ al-Qaeda.

To be sure, there is much in the 9/11 Commission Report that is highly critical of Saudi Arabia. Individual Saudis were culpable of heinous crimes: Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. For years, the Saudi government tolerated and in some cases fanned the diffusion of an extreme form of Islam, funding schools and mosques across the globe that spread it. Wealthy Saudis contributed to Islamic charities, some of which had links to terrorism. That policy has had tragic consequences for Saudi Arabia itself. Extremists made the Saudi kingdom one of their top targets. This is one of the reasons why Saudi Arabia has been a U.S. ally in combating terrorism; many Saudi public servants have died in their battles with al-Qaeda operatives.

Last year, the independent 9/11 Review Commission, created by Congress, studied evidence gathered in recent years. That panel also reviewed the 28 pages and reaffirmed the 9/11 Commission’s conclusions. It also concluded that there was no new evidence against the Saudi government.

On President Obama’s instructions, the director of national intelligence is evaluating the 28 pages to determine whether they can be released. Whatever decision is reached, we’d recommend that steps be taken to protect the identities of anyone ruled out as having any connection to the 9/11 plot. We also recommend that the background and context developed in the ongoing FBI investigation and contained in the work of the 9/11 Commission and the 9/11 Review Commission be included. That information will help advance a fact-based public debate on this important issue.

Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton are the former chairman and vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission and are co-chairs of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Security Program.